


Oeillet Rouge

by RedThePear



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Background Les Amis de l'ABC, Canon Era, Jehanparnasse - Freeform, M/M, Romanticism, Unrequited Love, be warned, dark Romanticism, jehan is a drama queen and so is montparnasse, lots of purple prose ahead, there are some character cameos but they're so little i couldn't dare put them in the character list
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2019-05-23 10:58:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14932944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedThePear/pseuds/RedThePear
Summary: Jean Prouvaire loved the dark and the occult and the moonlit beauty of old Paris. Then one fateful night, he fell in love with another dark, moonlit beauty, who slit people's throats and pierced Jehan's heart.





	Oeillet Rouge

**Author's Note:**

  * For [meianoite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meianoite/gifts).



Jehan’s mind and heart were like the ruins he so loved. The most exquisite rose of them all had torn him apart. He sat there, wondering, not knowing if he should fill the blank paper in front of him with his thoughts or if he should throw away the dark ink that so reminded him of the somber star he had burned his wings on.

\---

His first meeting with Montparnasse was perhaps not worthy of being called a meeting. It had been an apparition that had left Jehan blind and dumb. He loved to roam the dimly lit streets that intertwine round the jumble of ancient houses alongside the banks of the Seine. There, he felt, he could walk in the footsteps of the ancient poets and alchemists of medieval Paris. In the hours past midnight, these alleys, blurred out by the velvet frock of the night, gained once more the aura of things occult and hidden that had surrounded the city centuries ago.  
Some of his friends mocked him, or warned him about his nightly wanderings. “You might meet questionable people,” Grantaire had laughed in his face. His breath smelled like bad wine and his eyes were trembling. Jehan has brushed it off with a smile. The danger was part of the experience, after all. Besides, he already kept bad company, and Grantaire was definitely involved in it.  
On one especially inky night, Jehan donned his best doublet and slipped out of his attic room into the cobblestone labyrinth of the Île de la Cité. Lights were rare where he walked; lights there were only in the sky up above, and the stars dappling the night seemed to wink at him. A deliciously chilling breeze enveloped the cape he had throw over the dark green of his doublet. He could only see the white of his hands, ghostly pale and thin against the fabric and the stone around him. Smiling faintly he held one of then up to cup the moon between his slender fingers. But the moon disappeared behind a veil of clouds at the very moment he was about to catch its silver form. Instead, from the corner of the street, Jehan saw a flash of white go by. He heard the click of soles against the pavement. The clouds drifted away to unveil the moon and revealed a figure, standing alone in the darkness, looking at him.

In the flash of silver light that flooded the street for a single moment, Jehan barely had time to see anything of the mysterious silhouette. His eyes ran over an exquisitely tied cravat like a bouquet of red peonies, crimson lips parted in a slight smile, sculpted cheekbones, dark eyes that engulfed him whole. The apparition had an effortlessly seductive, slender body, and a waist made for arms to wrap around. The tails of its frock coat fluttered like the wings of a raven when it danced away into the darkness, leaving Jehan charmed and baffled and his heart aflutter. He ran after the figure but it was too late: when he arrived at the corner, he was desperately alone.  
He looked about, feeling lost, full of confusion and passion. The moon had gone away with the figure and it was only when Jehan returned to his attic room and lit a candle that he noticed his shoes were splattered with blood.

\---

When he told his friends about it, they laughed. Jehan, some opium or some spirit has gone to your brain, they said, Grantaire is a bad influence on you. You have been dreaming, child, do not lurk in this world of shadows and illusions.

He emptied his bubbling mind onto paper and drowned it in messy lines of sonnets and pantoums. But all the black he scratched away could not equal the eyes of his dark bloody muse. He bought silky red ribbons and bound his poems in small booklets, and when he read them over he wrote more to ease the feelings that came rushing back up.

 _Why does my heart cry so, my soul,_  
_And play the lute with nimble tears?_  
_I long for shadows up above_  
_While cruel, godly Beauty sneers._

Grantaire read his poems when he came to visit. He had not been as outspoken in his mockery as the others had been, but had rather sat silently, staring at Jehan with a glint in his eye and a smile at the corner of his mouth. He had caught Jehan by the hem of the doublet he wore more and more often after one afternoon at the Corinthe and hoarsely whispered Invite me over, Orpheus, and I’ll tell you more about your Eurydice into his ear.

Jehan’s room was a sight to behold. It had always had a peculiar appearance: everything in it reflected the image of the _poète maudit_ , from the messy heaps of paper spilling over a rickety table to the skylight, from which sunlight and snow alike would fall onto the wooden floor. Grantaire knew he could afford more, but Jehan liked to live la _vie bohème_. One single carnation, a sad reminder of a distant night of pleasure and decadence, withered away in a tiny metal vase. It was drooping over the neat pile Jehan had made of his poetry booklets.  
Jehan was also very much withering away, yet he seemed to accept it with a sort of pride. He wore his pallor as he would a new cravat, the blue veins on his eyelids and wrists like delicate lace. He never left his strange medieval garments now, and had altogether abandoned his usual brighter-colored, gay outfits. He was hunched over his writing table when Grantaire came in, and the hand he offered him was stained with black ink.

“So, still longing for that mysterious figure, are we?” said Grantaire, throwing himself onto Jehan’s spare chair. “I might have some news for you.”  
“I beg you, tell me,” Jehan exclaimed. “I have barely slept ever since that night.” He did not need to say this: the dark circles under his glistening eyes betrayed his long hours of insomnia. He had gone out far more often that usual, combing through the alleyways of old Paris until he knew every corner, every nook of its winding streets. He had not seen the dark silhouette again.  
Grantaire leaned forward with a knowing grin. “You see, I am a man of bad company... I know every gargote there is to know in town. I know every man, every woman there is to know in these places too. You sigh and fade away after a lovely figure who wears his clothes as well as he spills blood. You have told me everything you remember, God knows how many times and in how many ways. There is a young man who haunts the dark streets of Paris that fits your description perfectly…”  
Jehan jumped out of his chair and threw himself at Grantaire’s knees, hands trembling, voice quivering with excitement and emotion. “Oh, who is he? Bring me to him, please. You do not know how much it would please me. You would save me!”

He cut a striking figure in the white light of the window, with his wild and unkempt hair framing his pale face. He had the fragile beauty that a Chrétien de Troyes would have sung. Delicate, touching, and ever so innocent. Grantaire stood silent for a minute, gazing into Jehan’s wet eyes. At this moment, he realized that he did not want to tarnish the young man in front of him. Yes, Jehan was fascinated by the dark and the occult. Yes, he had received a skull as a gift from Joly and he often caressed it with his long fingers. But all of the crimson he wore, all of the blood and the grime and the torture he wove into his poems were a mere varnish. Jehan remained blissfully unaware of the stench of corpses and opium. He was a child, content to gaze at horror from afar and call it sublime.  
“You do not know what you’re getting yourself into,” Grantaire said at last. The smiling lines in his face had been replaced by furrowed brows and there was no laughter in his voice. “You are surely old enough to choose for yourself, but I have to warn you that there is more to this boy you are chasing after than a pretty waist and luscious lips. However, I know that all the warnings in the world will hardly stop you from going after him... Meet me tonight at the docks, and I’ll take you to him. Better you go there with me than alone, you could get yourself robbed or killed, lover boy.”  
Jehan’s expression had changed when he heard the seriousness in Grantaire’s voice. But his last words brought back the sheen in his eyes and he enthusiastically kissed his dark curls.  
“Thank you, thank you, thank you, you are a wonder. I will be there.” The absolute delight in his smile made Grantaire sigh with happy resignation. _What have I done,_ he thought as he went down the staircase of Jehan’s building. _Well, it was bound to happen anyways._

\---

That evening, Jehan left his room with his heart pounding so strongly he feared it might tear open his chest. He stopped by a flower girl to buy a fresh carnation, blood red, almost black, that he pinned to his doublet. He wore the same as the night he had met the vision. Its fabric rustled softly as he hurried down to the banks of the Seine. Under the velvet crinkled some paper, lines Jehan could feel close to his heart.  
He met Grantaire under the quivering yellow light of a street lamp and started to follow him in silence through deserted streets and alleys. They crossed some he knew; they dove into some he felt he had never seen before in all his nightly strolls. Little by little, the old cobblestones disappeared to make way for dirt and mud. There was a harsh glare in the light that sometimes slashed through the night, brutal fires whose rancid smoke made Jehan cough and hide his nose and mouth under his cloak. After what seemed like ages of taking one snaking street after the other, Grantaire took Jehan’s arm and led him through a small, crooked door. “Don’t go too far,” he hissed. “I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

In the grime and the bright orange light that bled on the walls, Jehan only had eyes for the sleek profile that was cut out like paper shadows over the vivid colors. He was there (once more) in front of him, his bloody muse, and though the noise in the tavern covered the tentative click of Jehan’s heels, he turned slowly to meet Jehan’s worshipful eyes. The young man stood starstruck, and he did not know whether the fireplace or the mysterious boy’s smile was responsible for the heat that flushed his cheeks. He looked around for Grantaire; he wanted the sight of him to give him the strength he needed. There he was, with his cravat askew and his eyes already shining with bad alcohol. He had seen Jehan and had absolutely understood what he was up to -- a wide grin and a wink sent him on his way. 

Jehan slipped his way through the swarming crowd, clutching his breast. Caught in the movement, he lost sight of the boy, tripped over someone’s foot, let out a small cry as he fell into the wave of drunken bodies, caught on to sticky shirt hems and frayed coattails and clawed himself back up. He dusted his doublet and looked around; he had somehow made it through the room. Grantaire was slumped on a stool and his eyes laughed at him from over a tankard of ale. He nodded at something behind Jehan.  
The boy was a few steps away from him. What a striking figure he cut, surrounded by the ragged bunch of the tavern’s other customers -- like some dark orchid that had miraculously sprung from a bed of stinging nettles. He was casually chatting with a giant of a man with a strange mask on his face. He was looking at Jehan, and his gaze had a glint of amusement in it. Jehan turned a deeper red (he hoped the harsh orange light of the fire would hide it) and before his bloody love could turn away, he strode over as confidently as he could.  
“I beg your pardon, Monsieur,” he blurted out. “If I could -- I would like to speak to you -- alone.”  
The young man smirked, his teeth flashing white. He gestured to his companion who left after having whispered something into his ear. He turned towards Jehan. “Well, this is the most alone I can get you. What do you want? I have not seen you here before, and you stick out like a sore thumb.”  
How lovely his voice was! It rippled over Jehan’s entire being.  
Jehan fumbled with his jacket and took out the booklet that had been resting against his breast. He looked straight into the boy’s eyes with a fragile, intense, passionate gaze as he held out the paper. Though he felt his voice had gone from sheer emotion, when he opened his mouth, the words could not stop flowing out.  
“From the first moment I saw you, I knew I could not rest lest I see you again. It was nothing. A flash of white against the night, and there you were; I thought you were a vision at first. Even now that you stand in front of me, so close, I still do, and I would take your hand to feel it but I am afraid you would fade away like a beautiful, terrible dream. I love you, Monsieur. I cannot live in peace without knowing your name, without knowing where to find you so I can worship you like you deserve. I have nothing more to give you than my heart and soul -- it is a meagre harvest: they have shriveled in your absence. But you could make them flourish if you gave me a sign, a token of yours to wear against my breast forever.”  
Jehan pressed the ribbon-bound booklet into the silent young man’s slender hands. Their hands touched for a fraction of a second and he drew back his own as if he were afraid to tarnish the statuesque beauty of these gracefully gloved fingers.  
“This is the fruit of my sleepless nights, Monsieur. I have put my blood on these pages in sacrifice to the sublime creature that you are -- I know you are a man of blood and crime; it only enhances your beauty to me. Please read these lines and maybe think of me. I will not bother you any further. My name is Jehan Prouvaire, and you have made a damned man of me. Please, let me know the name of my persecutor.”

He finally stopped. Jehan was out of breath, his eyes were as he looked pleadingly at the young man in front of him. The boy was despairingly quiet; his lips were parted in an incredulous smile as he looked the little poet up and down. He finally answered in a slow, gentle tone, his fingers toying with Jehan’s dainty poem booklet.  
“You are an adorable little thing, Jehan Prouvaire. Consider me flattered by your attentions. I will keep this -- he stroked the binding of the booklet -- and treasure it. I’ve never been a muse before. You want my name, do you? It’s Montparnasse. I’m looking forward to what use you will make of it.”  
And he smiled and he left. His coattails brushed against Jehan’s hip and hand as he disappeared into the crowd. Jehan absent-mindedly brought his hand to his mouth and kissed the feeling of the fabric against his skin before it died away. It was only when he was home that he realized the red carnation had been plucked from his breast.

\---

_My love, why hide away so?_  
_One glance is all I need._  
_Night’s ink your memories feed_  
_Turning my joys to woe._

_Paris is barren without you_  
_And the Seine seems to bleed._  
_Red makes my visions breed -_  
_No, they cannot be true._

_All love I have is hopeless_  
_Still my heart won’t be freed_  
_Sweet words and names you read_  
_Ended without a promise._

Jehan sprinkled sand onto the wet ink. This was the last poem to join his new collection. He had already gone back three times to the dingy tavern, and twice he had found Montparnasse there, a solitary diamond among the grime. Twice he had given him his scarlet-bound booklets. But Montparnasse had never returned the burning looks Jehan gave him. Despite the deep fiery red he often wore in little touches -- a silken handkerchief that was probably worth Jehan’s monthly rent, a cravat pin (was it ruby?) nestled in white -- he seemed to be wrapped in a thin cloak of ice that all the little poet’s words and gazes could not melt.  
Grantaire gradually stopped accompanying him, for the people of the tavern had gotten used to the sight of lovesick Jehan and his strange medieval outfits. They gently mocked him. “Here again, heh? You’ll never get that pretty boy’s attention. Better for you that you snap out of it.” But he refused to. He asked Joly to paint pomegranates on his coats and every day he wore a red carnation pinned to his heart. Every smile he did not receive from his bloody muse made his passion burn stronger. He was pitied by his friends, whose attempts at putting girls and boys into his bed to set his mind on something else than Montparnasse had all been met with soft but firm refusal. Grantaire constantly repeated his regrets of bringing him to the tavern that first night.  
“It’s worse than I imagined. I should never have given in to your doe eyes!” he exclaimed dramatically as he rocked back and forth on a chair in the Corinthe. But Jehan would beg him to proofread his poems for him and he reluctantly complied every time. He knew that he could not set the boy’s mind to anything else. He knew, because he was in the same situation. _All this won’t end well_ , he thought to himself as he refilled his and Jehan’s wine glasses.

 

One night, as he did three or four times a week, Jehan left his room to meet Montparnasse. He had heard from Grantaire that he would be at the Opera that night, so he set out to wait for him there. That evening, he had opted for a midnight-blue outfit that included a very peculiar hat. A peacock feather fluttered on it as he hurried through Parisian streets, making passersby point his way and laugh. Jehan seemed to be oblivious to it all as he carried on, a dreamy smile on his lips. He stopped by a cart heaped with flowers to buy a bouquet so large it covered his face as he resumed his walking. When he spotted the bright lights of the Opera, he nearly ran over to the door. The flowers proved quite useful to conceal the red on his cheeks and his uncontrollably eager, beaming smile. Jehan stood there waiting for the show to end – he could barely hold still. 

The doors opened, letting through a flood of people in their best clothes. Jehan scanned the crowd. He could not see Montparnasse, short as he was. He could not hear his voice. His peculiar clothes were attracting disapproving looks and half-choked laughs. The little poet began to panic, he looked around haggardly for his Luciferian muse to come and save him.  
He saw him at last. The artful dark ringlets of his hair that were rustled by the evening wind half covered his shining eyes. He looked exquisite in his opera outfit – the high collar of his black tailcoat brought out his sharp yet delicate cheekbones. He was rather soberly dressed, but his clothes were so well cut they seemed to have been molded directly onto his body. Jehan stared at Montparnasse’s supple, slim waist and wondered how it would feel to slide his arms around it, to feel the boy’s warmth and feel him move under the touch of his hands –  
His hands.  
There was a hand around Montparnasse’s waist. It was large, and gloved in butter yellow, and it shone with the bare light of jewels. It was not Jehan’s hand. It belonged to a tall man with money in his eyes and lust in his smile who embraced Montparnasse and kissed his beautiful hair and made him laugh. The horribly mismatched couple was coming Jehan’s way. When Montparnasse went round the pillar Jehan had been hiding behind, he found his little poet with a face covered in tears and unbelieving rage in his wet eyes. The huge bouquet was thrown to his breast. When Montparnasse looked up from the petals bleeding onto the pavement, Jehan was gone. 

 

\---

Jehan’s heart and mind were in ruins. He sat there, wondering, not knowing if filling the paper in front of him with his thoughts could help him anymore – if it had ever helped him. He looked at his inkwell and slowly poured its contents into the vase where the carnation of the day sat. When the water had turned thick and black, he left his room for the Corinthe. The ink was already seeping into the petals of the carnation.

\---

Summer had come and the streets of Paris were stifling from heat and tension. Jehan wore no velvet now, he had traded his doublets for flowing linen tunics, and wore his hair in long, loose tresses. He still wore carnations every day, slipped them into his braids, pinned them close to his heart. But the regulars of the dingy, loud tavern seldom saw him now; his friends were glad for his renewed presence at the Corinthe. He wrote poems for them, about strong, clear, bright things. Still, Grantaire picked up a folded piece of paper one night, covered in a few hastily scribbled lines.

_Why must red on a fighter’s breast_  
_Bring back your cherry lips?_  
_Why must the thought of you eclipse_  
_And drown out all the rest?_

Jehan began to smell like the gunpowder he hid in his billowy clothes. He remained the soft poet, but strayed away from fantasies to be fascinated by the concrete. He joined heated discussions and hushed meetings. He found Enjolras’ fiery words to be as beautiful as alexandrines, because they were true.  
On one night in June, he left his friend’s company discreetly and took the path he still knew by heart to the tavern with the bare, harsh lights.

\---

Montparnasse was greeted by knowing grins when he entered the tavern. “There’s someone waitin’ for you in the back room”, said one of the maids. “’Said he wanted to be alone with you.”  
He furrowed his brows and smoothed out his already perfect waistcoat before passing through the crowd to get to the small door of the back room.  
The little poet was waiting for him on a rickety stool. He fidgeted with the dirty glass of absinthe the tavern’s owner had given him. 

"Montparnasse”, said Jehan. “I have something to say."  
"I already know that you love me with all your being, if that’s what you wanted to tell me. This little game has gone on for too long, poet, you really should stop", sighed Montparnasse. He had deftly slipped Jehan’s carnation out of its buttonhole and was delicately plucking its petals off.  
"There’s that, but something else also. I’m leaving to fight tomorrow. I’m going to the barricades."  
Montparnasse was silent. But this silence was different from the others. Eventually, he spoke, and his usual friendly mockery had been stripped from his voice. His fingers had stopped moving.  
"You’re a fool. You can never win. Is this another one of your fascinations for the macabre? Dying in combat -- it isn’t beautiful. You’ll get gutted like pigs. Is pursuing murderers not enough for you anymore? Do you want to get murdered now?"  
His tone had risen and he had grasped Jehan’s shoulders, looking him straight in the eye. Jehan did not blush and stared back at him.  
“I don’t care about suffering. Others suffer more than me – one bullet and it’s over; how bad can it be? But suffering your whole life, suffering to live, that is worse than dying a million times. I have seen what goes on in this hellish tavern, in the alleyways that surround it. You are the only one here who is beautiful. The world has damned you and yet you damned it back. But not everyone can do the same. I don’t care if I die, if this means there can be a little more beauty in this world. My blood will clear the muck that stains these walls.”  
Montparnasse said nothing back. His large dark eyes ran over Jehan’s frail body, over his unblinking gaze, over his strange clothes. He slowly released his grip of iron and his hands slid around the boy’s slender waist. In the dark of the tavern’s little room, he pressed his lips to Jehan’s in an unbelievably tender kiss.  
“Go on, Jehan Prouvaire, go join your friends. Now you can die in peace, can’t you?”

\---

A volley of gunshots. Then smoke, then nothing. Somewhere, a man cried out. In the vague landscape of the street, a dark form had fallen to the ground and was left there by the National Guard. 

At night, a dark figure stepped out of a thin alleyway and into the open battlefield now engulfed in silence. It walked over to the fallen form.

How beautiful, thought Montparnasse as he knelt over the young man’s body. Deep red carnations were blossoming all over him. But from his torn buttonhole, there only hung a broken stem, hacked up by a bullet.  
When he smiled, it was a little broken too.

\----  


_Tranquille. Il a deux trous rouges au côté droit._ \- Arthur Rimbaud

**Author's Note:**

> Hello there, dear giftee! I hope this fic fulfilled your “dark Romantic Jehanparnasse pining” prompt. I decided to go full purple prose as I absolutely love to write that kind of stuff, and to incorporate some poetry into the lot as well! It was tremendously fun to write overall. 
> 
> There is a little surprise hidden in the second poem of the fic, I hope you found it. Remember to look at the poem from different angles ;) 
> 
> About the carnations: The red carnation symbolizes many things for me, first of all, there’s a carnation called in French “poet’s carnation”, red carnations can symbolize intense desire, and it does look a little like a cockade as well. Finally, carnation, “oeillet” in French, sounds suspiciously like “oeillade”, which means a look that’s full of love. Symbols have layers! Also, carnations are lovely flowers in general. Just like Jehan.
> 
> (Many thanks to R for beta-ing this fic and preventing a possible metaphor overdose!)


End file.
